Ferrari 'forgot' to tell Leclerc about Vettel's penalty

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11.06.19

Charles Leclerc has revealed Ferrari failed to tell him that team-mate Sebastian Vettel had received a five-second time penalty towards the end of the Canadian Grand Prix, with the team admitting they "forgot" to pass the information on.

Vettel was on course for victory in Montreal on Sunday but was handed a time penalty for an unsafe re-entry to the track after running wide under pressure from eventual winner Lewis Hamilton with 22 laps remaining, the two rivals almost colliding with each other and the wall.

It meant the German had to settle for second place despite being the first man across the line, and he was furious after the race, while Leclerc finished third.

Vettel's position could have been even worse, though, with Leclerc only finishing one second adrift of him after the time penalty had been taken into account, but the Monegasque youngster insisted he had not even been told about the situation.

"I didn't know anything about it," Leclerc said after the race.

"The team didn't let me know that Seb had a five-second penalty, so I was just trying to push to try and catch Lewis up, but I didn't know about the penalty.

"I was pushing very hard to catch up. I saw they were fighting, I saw they were close at least. I saw also that we were quite quick and we were catching up, so I was just pushing very hard so if anything happened I had the opportunity to be as close as possible to do so."